A Penny Arcade strip you like and why

[Sebmojo]

@bahimiron

Ever since he became friends with John Kricfalusi, Gabe’s been taking a lot of cues from his art. The way he draws Tycho’s mouth in the strip Daniel links a few posts up is an example.

Interesting, thanks. I think Gabe is a significant talent, not least for his willingess to be influenced - the artwork on ‘Lookouts’ is pretty much a copy of Mary Blair.[/quote]

Also, you realize you’re just going to end up annoying a lot of people who will come into the thread for no reason than to be annoyed, right?

Yeah - there’s a whole weird nerd-macho thing around disliking PA. Happily, I don’t give a fuck!

'K, this one is a Tycho bit: the last sentence is spine-tingling.

@Tycho

Long story short, I’m getting my chicken soup on, it’s Sunday afternoon, and Gabe’s reading some Preacher in the Den, which is also the living room, the bathroom, and the foyer. I am interacting with pasta dough in what I think is a stern way, when I hear him say that he might like the soup better if it were, in fact, carrot cake. It hits us, hits us both, simultaneously, like a semi made out of lightning which is also a professional boxer. Carrot Cake Soup. You cube the carrot cake, some pieces have frosting and some don’t, and you put a handful of these chunks into a bowl full of milk. So let’s go do it. We’ll do it later this week, he says. But I know that’s the same as not doing it. Why not now, I say? I know a store where we can get all the stuff. You can just buy it, the way you can buy stuff in the household cleaners section and make a bomb big enough to kill God. The stuff is just lying around there and nobody’s doing anything with it. It’s not a crime to buy them separately, and what we do at home isn’t any of their fucking business.
I think someone might have been following us as we pulled into the parking lot, we walked toward the grocery store and tried to keep the conversation natural. We certainly didn’t discuss carrot cake or the soup one might make by cutting it into cubes and swimming islands of it in cold milk, pleasure islands, like you’d see in a magazine. At the bakery counter, a woman asks if she can help me, and I’m so nervous that as I’m pointing to the carrot cake behind the glass, my finger starts to tap in Morse Code that reads:
I AM ABOUT TO COMMIT A CRIME AGAINST GOD AND MAN STOP
And where is Gabe with that Goddamn milk? There he is, in the self-checkout. Idiot. There’s cameras all over that thing, it’s like a Goddamn surveillance tree. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. A red light flashes on, and off in my mind. At another checkstand, I pay with untraceable cash, assuring the woman that I will eat the cake by myself, without assistance from cows. I smirk. This woman has no idea that she’s just sold me the trigger to a flavor gun. Carrot Cake Soup is like the taste of watching girls make out. It has an extraordinary power that oscillates between gentle and overwhelming, between light and dark, between pleasure and more pleasure. When it was over, I realized that I was panting. I was in possession of carnal knowledge. And I knew that, somehow, every taste beyond this point was in the service of the one that still lingered, waited, to remind me that nature has laws, and those that break them are criminals, and though they roam free enough the knowing will hold them, and keep them, until the last.

[Bahimiron]

I tend to use the Penny Arcade wiki or just do a Google site: search. I can’t believe they’ve never bothered to do tags or Web 2.0* that shit up with some user-generated searchable dialog scripts.

I also never noticed that our own David Hellman designed the logo for Dinosaur Comics.

*I said this because I know Zylon is reading and I love him very much.

[Sebmojo]

@Zylon

I like the Penny Arcade where Gabe (or was it Tycho?) is doing something really stupid, then gets mad when someone tries to make him stop.

Oh wait, I also like that one where I had absolutely no fucking clue what they were talking about until I read the attached news post.

Haha! That’s really funny how you said a thing implying that Penny Arcade sucks!

Do you have a strip you like? If so, why?

[AndrewMyers]

This thread would be more interesting if it wasn’t 95% Sebmojo. Slow down, champ :)

[CLWheeljack]

@Zylon

I like the Penny Arcade where Gabe (or was it Tycho?) is doing something really stupid, then gets mad when someone tries to make him stop.

Since I love me some Futurama, I’ll note that their writers have mentioned that a lot of their favorite scenes (especially with Bender) involve characters being absurdly into whatever they’re doing, regardless of how obviously mundane or pointless it may be to everybody else. It’s used fairly liberally on the Simpsons at times as well.

Anyways, I think my point is that despite your attempt at sarcasm, having a certain kind of character (ie stupid) totally committed to whatever stupid thing they’re doing is a pretty solid basis for comedy. There’s just something appealing about a character that really commits to what they’re doing.

For the record, I’m not look in archives for images kinda guy, but I like most of PA’s strips, and feel they’ve gotten consistently better over the years (I read their stuff on Loonygames, bitches!). I find that it’s best to think of them as editorial cartoons rather than funny page material. With that in mind, it’s understandable why they don’t make sense without the context of the news posts.

[Sebmojo]

@DanielElliot

I also like the one where someone is revealed to be an alien wearing human skin, but I forget the name of that one and can’t find it.

I live to sever! I mean serve!

[RyanMichael]

@DanielElliot

I like the really absurd ones best. When I’m trying to get someone into Penny Arcade, I usually show them Claw Shrimp.

That’s my favorite one of all time. I think they jumped the shark shortly after that strip though.

[Sebmojo]

@AndrewMyers

This thread would be more interesting if it wasn’t 95% Sebmojo. Slow down, champ :)

AHAHAHHhhahahhAHAHAhahah!!

Going to bed now! Slowing down as suggested!

[AndrewMyers]

Deep Crows.

[Zylon]

@Sebmojo

Do you have a strip you like? If so, why?

Actually, no. The closest they ever got was an oldie where one of them was obsessively playing System Shock 2. The punchline was, if I recall correctly, “I’m going to go pee on your stuff.” Which is about the median level of wit for PA.

At least the character designs back then were tolerable to look at. The lantern-jawed inbred freaks they resemble now just make me want to set them all on fire.

[Balasarius]

This is one of my favorites. As always, it’s one small detail that makes it, and in this case it’s the /spit t-shirt worn by the Blizzard employee.

[WarrenM]

Carrot Cake Soup is like the taste of watching girls make out.

That’s awesome.

[Balasarius]

Another, because it is so true.

[TimJames]

I’m not sure why this got me originally.

[Balasarius]

Here, the funny is in the art.

[OrfBC]

Start: Pause Game, Hold: Super Pause cracks me up, as does Back: Advance.

[CLWheeljack]

@DanielElliot

Start: Pause Game, Hold: Super Pause cracks me up, as does Back: Advance.

I personally like Y: Saute. Hold: Sear.

[Gordon_Cameron]

Everyone else seems to be leeching images off PA’s server, so perhaps this time nobody will bite my head off because they only see a little red square. Perhaps.

I like this one mainly for Gabe’s expression in the third panel.

[Bahimiron]

@Zylon

Actually, no. The closest they ever got was an oldie where one of them was obsessively playing System Shock 2. The punchline was, if I recall correctly, “I’m going to go pee on your stuff.” Which is about the median level of wit for PA.

At least the character designs back then were tolerable to look at. The lantern-jawed inbred freaks they resemble now just make me want to set them all on fire.

With the first line I was like ‘oh, hey, he’s just one of those people who doesn’t like PA’ and then I read the second bit and then I realized ‘oh, no, Zylon’s just bein’ fuckin’ Zylon’.

[jerri_blank]

@Sebmojo

'K, this one is a Tycho bit: the last sentence is spine-tingling.

Ugh. I HATE the way he writes. Actually, bloviates might be a better word. He used “o’erhead” in a game review last week, and I wanted to find him and cut his fingers off.